


Forgive and stare at the grand ocean (the place between rising and falling remix)

by pamymex3girl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel and Mental Health Issues, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Institutions, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/pseuds/pamymex3girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back then, in those years, in the beginning, she and Castiel used to sit, side by side, and stare at the grand ocean as it stretched out in front of them. </p><p>Anna vists Castiel in the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgive and stare at the grand ocean (the place between rising and falling remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [claudiapriscus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudiapriscus/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the place between rising and falling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/123905) by [claudiapriscus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudiapriscus/pseuds/claudiapriscus). 



> Written for the Remix Redux 11. This is my first Remix and in all honesty it was harder than I thought it would be. I hope I did it right, since I'm not entirly possitive I did. And I hope the author of the original story likes this tale. Also I had a lot of trouble naming this so the title probably sucks.

Long, long ago, back when they were still young and shapeless, just endless grace reaching out for each other, and the faces they now know each other by were nothing but a distant possibility that hadn’t even been considered yet. Back when the world was still in its infancy and humans were just shapes on earth, back when the darkness that would one day tear them all apart had yet to descend. Back then, in those years, in the beginning, she and Castiel used to sit, side by side, and stare at the grand ocean as it stretched out in front of them. (It was beautiful and haunting at the same time, because there was no end to it and yet they sat there, day after day, watching the waves crash into the sand.)

They were never alone, not then, not when all of them were still together and alive. (Before absolutely everything turned to dust and how did that even happen?) The voices of the other angels, all of them, mingled together int he back of their minds. It was a constant companion, never leaving them alone, yet it wasn' tannoying, not really, it wasn't something you wished you could turn of, it was just there. And the graces of all the other angels were always around them, close enough that they could touch them if they just reached out.

(There was Balthazar and his stupid jokes, Ezekiel and his stories, Gabriel and his constant, chaotic presence. It was, in short, their home.)

They were a part of _everything_ back then.

They were one.

(All of them.)

That, of course, was back then, when everything was still possible, and the future did not exist.

When Anna thinks about heaven and home, the first thing she remembers is her and Castiel, side by side, staring at the vast ocean.

(That probably means something, but if it does, she has no idea what that is.)

That was _eons_ ago.

So long, in fact, that there are times that Anna is convinced she dreamed it all. (All that beauty, all that grace, all that happiness.)

Now their whole world has turned to dust.

(There is nothing left of what was before.)

The archangels have all faded away, destorying each other in the end and most of the otehr angels are dead and gone as well, killed by one of their own. Those that still live are lost, leaderless, purposeless, trying to hang onto each other even if most don’t really get along. Still trying, desperatly, to make sense of the world they were left in. in. (And sometimes Anna wants to scream and point out that all that happened, all that was done, was probably their own fault. And hers as well.) Now, she is one of many again, leader of same garrison she had before – or at least leader of what’s left of the garrison. If the others still remember that she had once ripped out her grace and fallen to the earth, they no longer care. Or, more probably, they do care but there are so few of them left that those petty fights are better left in the past. She could do it again, of course, leave behind the destruction that heaven has become and fall to the earth again. But she wouldn’t be Anna Milton, she’d be a whole new girl, and Anna would fade away like all the other angels.

The angels need her.

They need all the angels they can get now.

(Even Lucifer might be able to find a home in this place, that is, of course, if he didn’t want to end it all.)

Most angels are hiding in the heavens.

(Who can blame them, really?)

But she’s not, she’s never been good at being confined, she’s always preferred to be down on earth. And that, really, was probably why she fell in the first place. There’s no real reason for her to be down here, no quests, no people to protect, she just comes down to walk around, to pretend she is still a part of everything. She isn’t, none of them are, not anymore. But then, maybe they never were in the first place. That’s how she found Castiel, completely by accident. She’d been walking down a street when his grace had reached out for hers, from somewhere far away and yet close by, desperately trying to heal itself. She’s not even sure Castiel himself knew he had done this, knew that he had reached out to her. (Maybe he hadn’t reached out to her, maybe it would have been any angel that came by in that moment. Maybe it was all one grand coincidence, maybe it had nothing to do with her specifically.)

She’d followed the path his grace laid out for her until she arrived here, at this mental hospital.

She remembers _this_ too.

The feeling of being lost, of having people around you tell you that you are insane. Locked up in a hospital –for your own good, they said – as voices took away your peace, and told you of the horrors to come. This place looks the same as the hospital her parents put her in, all those years ago. (Not even that long, but it feels like centuries.) It isn’t the same place, of course it isn’t, but it looks the same and that’s what’s important. (But then, they all probably look the same.) It’s almost like she’s time travelled, like she’s back to being that scared girl with the voices in her head, and the monsters in her life. She wishes she could go back to that, at times, back to the world were her parents were alive and her biggest problems were the doctors who didn’t believe her.

Not that it matters.

He’s alone; of course he is, lying in a bed, staring at the ceiling. His eyes are unfocused and she wonders, briefly, what it is that he sees, but she won’t ask. Her horrors had been real, the voices her brethren, the monsters the demons trying to kill her. But his are all in his mind, his are all manifestations of his guilt. At least that’s what she thinks they are. She wonders too, what drugs they have given him. Are there even drugs that would have effect on angels? Because he is an angel, unlike her back then, she can still feel his grace – shattered, and bruised and broken, yes, but still there, still within reach, still him. (That’s another thing she remembers, the haziness, the feeling of complete apathy, of finally being at peace. It never lasted long, the voices always came to shatter the peace the medicine gave her, and she suspects that the peace won’t last long for Castiel either.)

“They told me you were dead. You are dead.”

His voice is detached, so unlike the last time they met. (Not the last time she heard him, hidden in a part of the heavens he could not reach, when he had been menacing and so unlike himself it hurt to hear him. But the last time they spoke, when he had been strong and sure of himself, and she had been broken and lost but just as sure that what she was about to do was the only way to save them all.) She should hate him, or, at least, she should be angry. She had seen what was left of the heavens, seen the dead bodies of her brethren stretched out as far as she could see. She had seen the lost look in the eyes of those that still lived and she had seen what had become of the heavens they had once called home.

She should hate him.

She should scream at him.

She should make him pay.

But she can remember, all too clearly, standing in front of a pregnant woman – pregnant with the man that would one day save her life – apologizing for what she must do and doing her best to murder a woman that had never done anything wrong. She remembers not stopping, not listening to anything she said, not caring because that, in her mind, had been the only way to stop the end of the world. So maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t have a right to judge him, doesn’t have a right to hate him. Maybe none of them do, after all, in the end; the whole thing had been the fault of the angels. Maybe it’s time to let it all go and move on.

She can’t hate him.

(Not really.)

He is her little brother after all, she was supposed to protect him, guide him, but she had chosen to fall and left them all behind. She has her own faults, her own guilt to live with. And he looks so lost, feels so broken, that she cannot bring herself to feel anything but love and pity. She wonders if there are other angels that know he is here, if others have stood here and seen him and said nothing because like her, they had not known how to deal with it.

“This is a… hallucination.”

She smiles at the concept, at his difficulty at finding a word for it, because no angel has ever experienced it before. Even she, who had lived among the angels, who had been trapped in a place not unlike this one, had never actually had a proper hallucination. Everything that haunted her – the voices, the monsters – had all been real after all, not a product of her disease.

_Is it?_

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t speak, but she knows he can hear, like he always can. (They are one after all. Broken, and battered and lost, but together again, at last.)

“Michael-“

He stops then, despair clear in his face, and she wonders what it is he’s thinking of, what it is he remembers. It’s not her; she knows that, it’s not her and Michael standing in the Winchester’s old house. It’s not that because he wasn’t there and all he knows about that moment, all he’s learned, has come from Dean and Sam. (And, oh God, does she wish she could apologize, and make it better but no amounts of ‘Sorry I tried to kill your mother and unborn you’ will ever be enough.) Perhaps he sees the apocalypse and how it all ended; perhaps he sees the heavens and what he made of them. Probably not Raphael though, something she doesn’t blame him for, because Raphael had always been distant and cold, and ready to murder all those that stood in his way. (She’s actually surprised Raphael hadn’t tried to kill Castiel but then most angels believed, and still do, that their Father had brought him back. So maybe he was just afraid of the consequences, for surely, their Father brought him back for a reason.)

She reaches out then, because she needs to touch him, needs to make sure he is actually there and she is not imagining this moment, and softly brushes a hand down his face.

_Faith, brother._

‘ _You_ speak to me of faith?”

He sounds angry, lost and alone. He turns to the wall and says nothing else and she knows then that he still believes that she is not real.

She could leave.

Leave him alone in his insanity; leave him with the demons that haunt him. Leave him with the punishment for what he has done. Or she could speak, of love and heaven, of oceans and memories from long, long ago. But none of those things, none of those words will help. They won’t help her find her way in this new world, they won’t cure him and turn him back into who he was before and they won’t restore the heavens to a place they can actually call home.

All they have left, really, is faith.

Perhaps she should leave; it would be easier for her at least. Leave and pretend this did not happen, let Dean take care of him, let him fix it. That is, she thinks, what is expected of her. The angels think this is what she would do and Castiel himself would believe it too, if he actually believed she was real of course. But then she’s never actually done what was expected of her, so why should she begin now?

(In a way it’s her fault, she had been the one to tell him to question things, to follow his own path and that led him here. But then it’s also his fault because it had been his voice that she heard first, his voice that started her downfall.)

So instead of leaving she moves closer, until her wings twined around him, protecting him from the world outside. But not from his demons within but then there’s no real way to protect him from those. Their graces touched and she can feel how wounded he is, how lost, how shattered, but she can also feel that he will heal, someday.

They are one again.

They are together again.

It feels like she’s finally come home.

She rests her forehead against his and thinks of the million things she should say to him and the things she could say. She things of memories and oceans and love and forgiveness. She speaks before she makes the conscious decision to do so, speaking of the ocean, of the waves crashing into the sand, of the two of them sitting side by side, staring at that beautiful view.

_I love you._

He says nothing, but his grace moves closer to hers and she knows he heard her.

_And I forgive you._


End file.
